The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.

The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.

The report says Dogan had apparently been "lying on the deck in a conscious or semi- conscious, state for some time" before being shot in his face.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

The editor of this Jewish community newspaper in Winnipeg, Canada has gone out on a limb to ask for and publish an op-ed from me on the peace process. If you are so inclined, please click on the link below and leave a comment on their site, especially if you are Jewish and even more so if you are a Jewish Israeli.

Moving beyond preaching to the converted,

Sam

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Palestinian Sam Bahour's take on the peace process

Friday, 24 September 2010 20:00

Ed. note:

The following piece by Sam Bahour is offered as a commentary by a Palestinian whose name was recommended to us by one of our readers. Bahour has previously written for Ha’aretz newspaper. He is interested in reading reaction to the following piece and developing a dialogue with Canadian Jews. If you would like to respond to Bahour, please send an e-mail to The Jewish Post & News: jewishp@mts.net.

By SAM BAHOUR

As a Palestinian-American father of two daughters living in Al-Bireh, the twin city of Ramallah, no one on this earth more than I wish for Palestinians and Israelis to reach a lasting peace agreement. I suspect that the overwhelming majority of Israeli parents feel the same; I know my Israeli friends do. I would even expect that many of those Israeli settler parents who live on those military garrisons of confiscated lands that pepper West Bank hilltops feel the same too. But wishing in a vacuum artificially raises expectations that hurt even harder every time they come crashing to the ground to meet reality.

The facts on the ground are bitter, very bitter. To extract the region from never-ending turmoil to that of permanent stability and normalcy much more self-reflection will need to be made by all the parties involved.

I’ll start with my own side, the Palestinians. In 1948 Palestinians were dispossessed from 78 percent of our homeland, 60 percent of Palestinians are internally displaced or dwell in refugee camps just hours from their homes and properties, 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza survive under siege conditions, hundreds of thousands have been illegally detained or assassinated by Israel, and the economy is micro-managed by a foreign military that is underwritten by donor countries. The Palestinian negotiating team claims to be a legitimate leadership but there is not one functioning institutional body that can genuinely claim to be the source of their self-defined legitimacy.

For its part, Israel is not in much better of a position. Its government is comprised of a toxic coalition that mixes neo-conservatism with Jewish fundamentalism and lives on the verge of daily collapse. The Israeli society is using the word fascism more and more to depict the direction of Israeli politics. During the last few years, past Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and current Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak both spoke of “Apartheid” as being the direction in which Israel is heading. Israel’s four decade military occupation has corrupted Israeli society to the bone; the military itself was one of the first victims but the society at large has not been spared. The settler enterprise has Israel in a bear hug that has the power to bring serious chaos to all walks of Israeli life. The ultra-orthodox community is hugging Israel from the other side with the same vengeance. To save Israel from itself Israel needs a lasting agreement more than any time since its founding.

Finally, and most damaging to the prospects of peace is the United States. Never being a neutral mediator and always using Israel for its own geostrategic plans the U.S. refuses to release its monopoly on the Palestinian-Israel issue. While it arms, funds and diplomatically covers for one side, it murmurs words of peace out of half of its mouth to the other.

The U.S. has tremendous leverage that could be used if it was truly serious about bringing the region closer to peace, but ultimately, it will be the Palestinians and Israelis that must come to bear the consequences of an end to the conflict. That quest for an end of conflict will be served up on a platter of international law or on a battlefield of the law of the jungle.

Illusionary peace negotiations can only lead to a hallucinated peace.

Sam is a Palestinian-American based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine. He is a freelance business consultant operating as Applied Information Management (AIM), specializing in business development with a niche focus on the information technology sector and start-ups. Sam was instrumental in the establishment of the Palestine Telecommunications Co. (PALTEL) and the PLAZA Shopping Center and until recently served as a Board of Trustees member at Birzeit University and was the University’s treasurer. He is a Director at the Arab Islamic Bank and a founding Board member of the community foundation Dalia Association. Sam writes frequently on Palestinian affairs and has been widely published. Sam is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians and may be reached at sbahour@palnet.com and his work may be found at www.epalestine.com.

President Obama's General Assembly speech called on the international community to mobilize behind the U.S.-led "peace process." He called on the Palestinians to "reconcile with a secure Israel" and waxed eloquent on the illegality of killing Israeli civilians. He called on the Palestinians' friends to implement the Arab Peace Plan's proposed normalization with Israel without ever mentioning the plan's clear understanding that ending Israel's 1967 occupation must come first. And he called on Israel to - talk nicely.

Obama did say that Israel's partial settlement moratorium "should" be extended, but carefully went on to urge that the talks "press on until completed" with no linkage between the two goals. Not to mention that what he calls a "moratorium" has consistently allowed continued building throughout Arab East Jerusalem, continued construction on homes already approved or begun, and work on huge infrastructure projects throughout the settlements.

Obama pretty much ignored any substantive role for the United Nations in the "peace process," but he lectured the General Assembly, noting that "many in this hall count themselves as friends of the Palestinians." (He didn't, apparently, include himself in that category.) From those friends, he demanded "tangible steps towards normalization" with Israel, ignoring the fundamental basis of the Arab Peace Initiative that makes clear normalization comes after, not before, an end to Israel's occupation.

And he condemned the "slaughter of innocent Israelis," but said not one word about Israel's 2008-09 assault, which used U.S. arms to kill 1,400 Gazans--more than 900 of them civilians and more than 300 of them children. Let alone any mention of the nine killed (including a U.S. citizen) and 50+ injured in the Israeli assault on the Turkish ship in the international humanitarian flotilla a few months ago.

The speech made clear that support for the moment, the endless "peace process" is, for Washington, a perfectly appropriate alternative to holding Israel accountable for any violations of human rights or international law. The Goldstone Report, UN and other efforts to hold Israel accountable for the illegalities inherent in its occupation and apartheid policies, or even the extreme violations like the Gaza war or the flotilla assault, must be sidelined or squashed entirely - because they could undermine the peace talks, whether or not those peace talks have any hope of succeeding. It is the exact opposite position as that taken by Obama's UN Ambassador Susan Rice regarding Darfur. Rice was one of the strongest voices insisting on full implementation of the International Criminal Court indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir regardless of the dangers it posed to the fragile Sudanese ceasefire because accountability must come first, insisting that justice comes before peace.

But not, apparently, when it comes to Israel-Palestine.

Obama made a vitally important point when he said that "international law is not an empty promise." Unfortunately he said that only in regard to imposing sanctions on Iran. After that, when he began to speak of Palestine and Israel, the phrase "international law" was never seen again.

In all his discussions of the peace talks and their importance, and even in his description of the arguments of "the cynics," Obama never acknowledged the most important reason why this round of talks will almost certainly fail to bring about a just, comprehensive and lasting peace: because they are not based on international law and the UN Charter and resolutions. The president said that the cynics' view is that Israelis and Palestinians don't trust each other, that both parties are divided internally, that "the gaps between the parties are too great." But he never acknowledged that "the parties" do not come to the table as equals, that this is not a border dispute between Peru and Ecuador. These are talks between an Occupying Power, which happens to be the 23rd wealthiest country in the world and by far the strongest military and nuclear weapons power in the region, backed by the strongest and most powerful country on the globe, facing an impoverished and dispossessed occupied population. When talks are based on accepting that inequality as a given, when the arbiter of the talks is the main backer of the stronger party, and when international law is ignored, the talks cannot succeed.

So far, the Obama administration seems to be saying that "no change" is the only change we can believe in when it comes to U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The entire U.S. administration's Middle East A-team--President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and Special Envoy Mitchell--is defying the mass majority of political analysts by dismissing the status quo in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip, and insisting that the latest round of Palestinian-Israeli direct talks has the potential to lead to an agreement which will resolve the conflict. I have a deep fear that they may be correct in predicting an agreement will be signed, but I do not have an iota of confidence that it will end the conflict.

Conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic predicts that the current peace talks will hit a cement wall before the one-year time frame expires. The numerous explanations for the predicted failure are all sensible given the region's track record. International law is blatantly ignored, the logic of might is right trumps justice and the international community continues to turn its back to its own obligations toward the occupied Palestinian people.

On the Palestinian side, reality is a mix between frustration, despair, disunity and betrayal. The Palestinian negotiating team claims to be a legitimate leadership but there is not one functioning institutional body that can claim to be the source of their self-defined legitimacy. This quasi-leadership understands its legitimacy crisis so well that only a few months ago they were forced to cancel legally-required municipal elections out of concern of losing, even though Hamas was boycotting the elections-- so much for Palestinian democracy.

The fear is that the Palestinian negotiating team is in their final round in the game of political survival. If these current talks do not reach an agreement--any agreement-- the only way for Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts to remain in office will be by way of the barrel of a gun, similar to how most other Arab states exist today.

However, the Palestinian people are not your average Arab population; they understand that their demise was not served up at the hands of the Palestinian leadership, legitimate or otherwise. First to blame is Israel for its dispossession of Palestinians and what is commonly referred to as military occupation. The 1948 dispossession took place in broad daylight for all to see, although many preferred blindness. Israel was created on the remains--both living and dead--of Palestinians, leaving some 5 million refugees dwelling in squalid refugee camps for over 60 years and many others displaced in their own homeland. It is no wonder that Israel fears for its security.

The military occupation part of Israel's crimes against humanity began in 1967 and is becoming less and less recognizable with every new Israeli settlement and violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions. International law defines military occupation as a state of affairs which is temporary by nature. After forty-three years it is becoming much harder to classify Israel's occupation as temporary. As a matter of fact, the occupier, Israel, has dumped volumes of professional media spin over the past four decades to convince the world that the lands in question are in fact "disputed" and not militarily occupied. If the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip are not occupied, then what are they? Are the negotiations launched in Washington D.C. aimed at ending an internationally-recognized (and U.S. recognized) military occupation or are they rearranging some other reality which is yet unnamed?

If we view the facts on the ground in Israel-Palestine for what they are today, then only one word applies: apartheid. Realizing this reality as apartheid is not new. President Jimmy Carter referred to it in his recent book title; past Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak both spoke the "A" word as being the direction in which Israel is heading.

True, apartheid is best known for its application in South Africa and for its ultimate collapse there. However, the system of apartheid did not stop with its failure, it moved on to be defined in international law for what it was: a crime. The 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defined the crime of apartheid as inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity "committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." If this definition does not reflect what Israel is doing to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel proper, then blindness reigns supreme.

Thus, if these current direct talks are aiming to produce an agreement that ignores or attempts to coexist with the unrelenting, slow-motion, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that Israel continues to this day, then it will be worthy of merely a few photo-ops that will be forgotten before the negotiating teams return to their respective homes. Even the creative idea floating around of using a failure in the talks to get the UN to admit Palestine as a state--if it does not remove the underlying system of apartheid--would merely be rearranging the legal status to serve the continuation of Israel's crimes against humanity.

The most dignified failure these talks can hope for is that the international community finally come to its senses, preferably with the U.S., and passes a UN resolution with specific punitive actions that identifies the status in Israel-Palestine, all of historic Palestine, for what it is: the crime of apartheid.

Only when the definition of the problem is crystal clear can we formulate an appropriate solution and have renewed faith in the international community's ability to act on what it knows very well to be reality: that Israeli actions over the last six decades have nullified the two-state solution. A new model of co-existence must be envisioned, a model built not on racism, separation and exceptionalism, but on mutual and equal human and civil rights across all of Palestine and Israel.

If the current peace talks surprise the world and result in a true sovereign Palestine, free of Israeli control and domination, then I'd be happy to be mistaken; if not however, it's time for the world to at least call reality for what it is. Anything less is an insult to our collective intelligence.

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant living in the Palestinian city of Al-Bireh in the West Bank. He is co-author of HOMELAND: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1994).

Sam Bahour - Photo

About Me

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine and is managing partner of Applied Information Management (AIM), which specializes in business development with a niche focus on start-ups and providing executive counsel.
Bahour was instrumental in the establishment of two publicly traded firms: the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL) and the Arab Palestinian Shopping Center. He is currently an independent director at the Arab Islamic Bank, advisory board member of the Open Society Foundations’ Arab Regional Office, and completed a full term as a Board of Trustees member and treasurer at Birzeit University. In addition to his presidential appointment to serve as a general assembly member of the Palestine Investment Fund, Palestine’s $1B sovereign wealth fund, Bahour serves in various capacities in several community organizations, including co-founder and chairman of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy, board member of Just Vision in New York, board member and policy adviser at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and secretariat member of the Palestine Strategy Group.